Monstrous

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  “Mom!” he cried out, but she just smiled, leaning across the table to light the candles at its center.

  The insects were everywhere now, flowing across the table, onto the food, and onto his mother.

  Rich tried to move again, but his body remained frozen. “I can’t move!” he cried out. “Mom . . . Dad, I can’t . . .”

  The insects had covered his parents, marring their features with their shiny shelled bodies. But Dad continued to fuss with the carcass of the bird, while Mom moved a few more things and stood back, hands on her hips to take it all in.

  Rich was crying, the horror of what he was seeing almost more than his brain could stand. He managed to move himself sideways in the chair, hitting against the side of the table, causing things to tumble.

  The lit candle landed upon the table with a hiss and a whoosh of air as the tablecloth caught fire.

  “No, no, no!” Rich screamed, watching as the flames grew higher and more bold. He tried to squirm and push himself away as the heat of the fire singed his skin.

  It wasn’t long before the flames caught his parents, as unaware of the fire that ate at them as they were of the thousands of insects that crawled upon their bodies.

  The wallpaper was peeling away in fiery strips that floated through the air like fish swimming beneath the sea. Burning embers dropped upon Rich’s paralyzed body, setting his clothes afire. He could feel his skin blistering.

  The pain was excruciating, but all he could do was scream helplessly as his parents continued to prepare their Thanksgiving feast.

  Even though they were nothing more than burning skeletons.

  * * *

  Dr. Sayid pressed down on Rich’s shoulders, attempting to keep the thrashing young man in place on the narrow bunk in the boat’s cabin. His skin felt hot with infection.

  “It’s all right,” Sayid said, attempting to soothe the moaning Rich. He wasn’t sure if it was his words or something else, but the young man calmed, his body falling back limply on the bunk.

  Sayid waited a moment to be sure Rich slept, then checked the bandages and the wound. It still looked infected, but there was little more he could do, other than keep it clean.

  He crossed the cabin, drawn by an old CB radio sitting in a place of honor upon a shelf. It looked as though it was still operational, and the doctor turned it on. The dials glowed as it came to life with a loud, crackling static. He glanced at his patient to be sure the noise hadn’t disturbed him, but Rich was still fast asleep, muttering incoherently. Turning his attention back to the CB, Sayid turned the dials, hoping for an open channel, only to hear that angry hissing sound dominating the airwaves.

  He wondered about the beings that were responsible for what was happening. Why would creatures so advanced travel from wherever it was they came from only to commit such violent acts upon another intelligent species? It perplexed him, but then he reminded himself that he was human. For these otherworldly beings, what they were doing might just be how they functioned, what they did to survive. It angered him to think that humanity’s first real contact with an alien species would result in violence, but very little opportunity was left now for peaceful discourse.

  Being without any form of communication with the outside world chilled him to the core. What was going on in Boston . . . as well as the rest of the world? He pushed those thoughts down and focused on the current objective—get to Boston, then contact the authorities.

  Suddenly he realized he was no longer alone and looked up to see Sidney standing in the cabin.

  Sayid gasped. He must have been far more tired than he realized, for at first he didn’t see Sidney—he saw his own daughter standing there.

  And felt the panic immediately set in.

  He thought of her back in Chicago, and then found himself thinking about the weather.

  They come in the storm, he heard a child’s voice say. The little girl who had managed to be the sole survivor of another isolated-island attack.

  “Thought I’d come down and check on Rich,” Sidney said. “Are you all right, Doc?” she asked.

  Sayid sighed, squeezing his eyes shut. “Yes, Sidney, I’m fine. I’m just a little fatigued.”

  “If you want to rest . . . ,” she said, making a move to climb the stairs back up to the deck.

  “No, that’s quite all right,” he said quickly. “I think some fresh air will do me good.” He smiled as he walked past her. “Stay here with your friend; he might need reassurance that things will be fine.” He had started up the stairs when he heard her from behind him.

  “Will they?”

  Sayid stopped and turned, leaning down so he could see her below the deck. “Sorry?”

  “Will things be fine?” she asked him point-blank.

  There was an awkward silence between them that said more than any words could.

  “There’s some Tylenol on the table if he should wake up,” Sayid said finally, and turned to the deck above.

  * * *

  Sidney watched the scientist go, feeling her mood plummet even lower than it had been.

  What the hell are we doing? she asked herself. Sailing into a storm to get to a city in the midst of . . .

  Invasion?

  It was crazy, but that’s exactly what it was, and it was even crazier to think that they might be able to do something about it. Who the hell were they?

  She felt the presence inside her mind flutter just enough to remind her that it was still there. It hurt, and she considered the Tylenol on the table for herself.

  But then Rich moaned, and she found herself going quickly to his side. Her friend looked terrible, his skin pale, yet hot to the touch. Sidney looked around the cabin and went to a small wet bar in the corner, where she soaked a strip of paper towel in some cool tap water, then returned to Rich and laid it upon his burning brow. He shivered as she leaned forward to stroke the side of his face.

  “You’re gonna be okay,” she told him. “We’re gonna get to Boston and find you a hospital, and get some antibiotics into you.”

  He seemed to calm a little bit, so she continued to stroke his dampened hair.

  She knew how Rich felt about her; she would have to have been stupid not to understand the meaning of the years of sidelong glances and smirks when he thought she wasn’t looking. And she did actually love him . . . but not in that way. He’d been like a brother to her for so very long that she couldn’t imagine him any other way. It would crush her to lose him from that special place he filled for her. She imagined they would be having a talk in the not too distant future.

  If there was a future to have.

  “How are you going to take it?” she found herself asking her unconscious friend. “If I tell you that I don’t like you in that way? It’s not that I don’t love you. . . .” She found it hard to say the words, but now just seemed like the right time.

  “I do love you,” she told him. “So very much, just not in the way that you’d like. And I’m sorry for that.” Sidney stroked his cheek. “Hopefully, when you get better, we can have a good talk and work this crap out.”

  Sidney looked at him, lying there so frail and sick, and thought how terrible it would be to lose him.

  “You rest and get better, okay?” She half expected him to answer in some wiseass fashion, but he remained quiet and sleeping in the grip of infection.

  A bluish light on the other side of the cabin caught her eye, and she went over to it. It was an old CB radio that had been left on, hissing softly to itself. This must be what Sayid was looking at, she thought. She moved closer, reaching out to turn the silver dial.

  Her entire body seemed to grow numb except for a strangely cold sensation in her hand on the CB dial. She felt as though she was falling, everything around her stretching and distorting, as that cold, horrible presence grew inside her mind, writhing in the dark places that had begun to expand, swallowing up reality and bringing her . . .

  Someplace else.

  The imagery was fast and f
urious. A city engulfed in storm, towers of metal perched on hills and rooftops, reaching up to the heavens, entwined with thick, pulsating tendrils of red and lined with buzzing circuitry. Thinner veins branched out from the larger, webbing the entire structure, making it into something more than it was.

  But what?

  Sidney reached for the information, trying to draw it closer so that she might understand, but someone . . . something . . . didn’t want her to know.

  And that just made her angry. In her mind she surged forward, wrapping her fingers within the vision, pulling it away like a sheet covering a piece of furniture.

  The pain she felt was excruciating, needles of intensity jabbing into her brain; they did not want her to see, but for the briefest of instances—

  She did.

  Then it was if she’d been ripped from her body, only to be shoved back in like dirty clothes into an overstuffed laundry bag.

  Sidney actually screamed as she rushed back, snapping forward on the curved bench below the radio, where she’d fallen, gasping for air as she attempted to reacclimate herself.

  She realized that she wasn’t alone and looked into the disturbed face of Brenda Langridge. The woman’s eyes were wide, shocked, and Sidney had to wonder exactly what she’d seen.

  “I’m okay,” Sidney gasped.

  Langridge slowly shook her head. “No,” she said. “You’re not—look at your hands.”

  Sidney’s hands were covered in blood, and for the briefest of moments she wondered who it belonged to, but that was just before the pain kicked in, the nasty feeling of thousands of tiny lacerations on the tips of her fingers.

  “How?” she managed to get out, staring at her still bleeding fingertips.

  When Langridge didn’t reply, Sidney glanced up to see her looking at the table and suddenly understood where her injuries had come from.

  The CB radio had been completely dismantled, every single piece of the device taken apart and separated into neat piles.

  * * *

  “Jesus,” Langridge said as she grabbed some paper towels from the sink and stuffed them into Sidney’s hands. “Why?” she asked.

  Sidney looked as surprised as she was, almost as if the girl had no idea that she’d done it. “I don’t know,” she answered, squeezing the gradually staining paper towels. “I was trying to find a signal on the radio,” she began. “And then . . .”

  Langridge moved back to the table, reaching down to examine the circuitry that had been set aside. “Why were you taking the high-tech stuff out and discarding the rest?”

  “I said I don’t know,” Sidney snapped.

  “What was it like?” Langridge persisted. “Was it like a blackout? Were there visions this time or . . .”

  “Yeah, visions,” Sidney said.

  Langridge looked at her and noticed a trickle of blood beneath one nostril. “Anything useful?” she asked, motioning with her finger beneath her nose.

  Sidney wiped her nose with the paper towels. “Thanks,” she said. “I really don’t know. . . . I saw the city again . . . felt what it was doing . . .” A vague look appeared in her eyes. “I saw towers,” she continued softly, and Langridge had no doubt that Sidney was seeing them again.

  “What kind of towers?”

  Sidney didn’t answer right away, keeping that weird vagueness to her expression.

  “Sid? What kind of towers?” Langridge repeated.

  The girl was back, her eyes focusing on the here and now. “Cell towers?” she asked, as if not quite sure. “But there was something different about them. . . . They . . . they were changed.”

  “Changed,” Langridge repeated. “How?”

  “They were changed to hurt us,” Sidney said.

  Langridge was about to pursue that when the boat shuddered as if it had struck something.

  “Did you feel that?” she asked Sidney, looking around. Had they hit something in the water?

  It happened again, and then again.

  And then Langridge realized that the yacht hadn’t hit anything at all. Something was hitting the yacht.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Delilah had been on the eighth floor—the Vegetable Patch—only one other time. It had been during the first week of her orientation when Mallory had given her a tour of the special unit, even though as a student, she would never work up there.

  The unit was fascinating. She remembered how eerily quiet it had been, only the soothing hum of the life-support beds and the beeping of the computers that monitored them. There had been one nurse on the unit that day, Betty, and Delilah found herself wondering about Betty’s fate this day.

  She reached out and pulled open the doors to the unit, Deacon following close behind her. The lighting was soft, muted, and Delilah realized she was holding her breath as she searched the shadows for signs of attack.

  “I’ve always hated the quiet up here,” Deacon said. “It’s like a funeral home.”

  “But the folks here are still alive.”

  He made a noise of disapproval as they walked down the soft-blue corridor. “You call what’s up here alive?” he asked her.

  “They’re alive,” Delilah retorted. “Just not able to move around is all.”

  “The only reason they are alive is these damn machines.”

  “Yeah,” Delilah agreed. “That’s right—but they’re still alive.”

  “That isn’t living,” Deacon scoffed. “It’s a form of cruelty is what I say.”

  “Some people believe that life is sacred, no matter what.”

  “Yeah, and I ain’t one of them.”

  The emotion in Deacon’s words made Delilah wonder if there was something more behind them, but they had reached the nursing office. The door was closed, and the vertical glass windows on either side showed that the lights were off.

  “Doesn’t look like anybody’s home,” Deacon said, leaning in close, trying to see into the darkened office. “Shouldn’t there be a nurse up here?”

  “Yeah,” Delilah said. “I met one, named Betty.” She reached for the knob and turned it. The door wasn’t locked, and she cautiously pushed it open.

  It swung halfway in before something stopped it.

  “Something’s in the way,” she said, wedging herself into the opening to see that a chair had been placed beneath the door. She grabbed the wooden arms of the chair and was attempting to push it aside when—

  Something jumped up from behind the desk, something large and screaming like a wild animal. Delilah tried to pull back but wasn’t quick enough. Something smashed over her head, making her grunt as stars danced before her eyes.

  Deacon grabbed her by the waist, pulling her out. Through bleary eyes Delilah saw her attacker—Betty—once a kind, caring woman, now wild-eyed and full of rage. She was coming at them, using an umbrella as a club, preparing to strike again.

  “Betty,” Delilah cried out. “It’s okay! Remember me? You told me I reminded you of your granddaughter.”

  The large woman stumbled back, bringing the umbrella down.

  “Delilah, right?” the woman said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Delilah said.

  “Who’s that with you?” she asked, raising the umbrella again.

  “It’s Mr. Deacon,” Delilah said.

  “Deacon,” she said. “Yeah, I know him, but I usually deal with Mason.” She moved the chair out of the way and opened the door wide. “Get in here before they notice,” she ordered, her eyes darting up and down the hallway.

  She slammed the door behind them and wedged the chair underneath the knob.

  “They?” Delilah asked.

  The woman stared at her for a moment, as if deciding if she should answer or not. “The patients,” she finally said, her voice a whisper.

  Delilah felt the cold finger of dread run down her sweating back, and it made her shudder. “What’s been going on up here?” she asked.

  Betty stared off into space, absently reaching up to rub at her neck, where multiple scra
tches and bruises were evident. Delilah could see that she was holding back the tears.

  “Everything was fine,” Betty finally began to explain. “Just as it always was . . . my babies were in their beds, and I was at the nurses’ station finishing up my paperwork. Then the power went out, and the alarms started to go off. I got up to check on the babies.”

  She paused, staring at the door for a moment before continuing. “I can’t begin to tell you how insane it was,” she said, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Here were these people, most of them I’ve been taking care of for years, and they’ve never moved, never changed . . . and yet they were all up and out of their beds.” Betty shook her head. “At first I didn’t believe it . . . my brain was telling me there was no way I could be seeing what was right before my eyes.”

  She stopped and looked at them.

  “And then I saw the pieces on the floor, and I realized that they were taking apart their beds.”

  “Just like the computer room,” Deacon said, nodding toward Delilah.

  “Their fingers,” Betty continued as if not hearing him. “They were all bloody. I tried to help them.” The look on her face went from sadness to fear, and she rubbed at her neck again. “But then they tried to kill me. They rushed me all together. I barely got in here with my skin intact. I don’t think I would have if it wasn’t for their years of immobility—even our technology can’t prevent the muscle wasting from lack of weight bearing.

  Betty’s face grew very still as she looked toward the door. “I’ve got to get out of here,” she said quietly. “I’ve got to get home.”

  Delilah nodded in agreement, reaching out to touch the woman’s arm. “We all need to get home.”

  Deacon had moved to the door and was listening for sounds in the corridor. “We just have to figure out how to do that without getting killed.”

  They all heard it at the same time.

  “Did you hear . . . ?” Betty began, pushing off from the desk.